Macbeth
An Introduction
…Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Macbeth: The Time Period
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born in
Stratford-on-Avon, England while Queen Elizabeth I
was the ruling monarch
Time of national strength and wealth and the prevailing
attitude was that life was exciting
Time of exploration: the world and man’s nature and
language
Also considered the English Renaissance (1500-1650)
Macbeth: The Renaissance
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Humans had the potential for development
The idea of a medieval Christianity, that this world is a preparation for
eternal life, was questioned. Instead, people see everyday life as meaningful
and an opportunity for noble activity
Time for heroes. The ideal Elizabethan man was a talented courtier,
adventurer, fencer, poet, and conversationalist. He was a witty and elegant
gentleman who examined his own nature and the casues of his actions.
Marriages were arranged – usually for wealth
People were concerned with the order of things. They felt there was great
chain of being. This concept originated with Plato and expressed the idea that
these is a proper order within all things and among all things, based on
complexity, from the tiniest grains of sand to heaven and God. When
everything is in position, there was harmony. When the order was broken,
everything was upset and everyone suffered.
People felt that their rulers were God’s agents. To kill a King was a heinous
crime; the heavens would show ominous signs when such evil was present.
Macbeth: The Language
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Blank verse: (unrhymed iambic pentameter)
 Whenever
there is a change in this pattern of language,
there is a reason. Shakespeare typically changes when he is
creating a mood, establishing a character, etc.
 Shifts
in language are crucial
 The
witches speak in rhymed couplets of irregular iambic
tetrameter
 The
Porter (Act II, Scene III) speaks in prose
 Lady
Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene is in prose
Macbeth: The Language
Shakespeare
uses a lot of figurative
language (especially simile and
metaphor)
Why?
To expand ideas and amplify imagery
For example, in Act I, Scene II, the bloody sergeant
describes the battle against Macdonwald:
Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald—
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that / The multiplying villainies of nature
Do swarm upon him—from the western islesOf kerns and gallowglasses is
supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show’d like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak:
For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage / Till he faced the slave;
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements.
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There are three similes in this brief, 17-line
passage:
• Macbeth and Banquo are not swimming.
Neither is drowning. The sergeant is explaining
that the two sides of the battle were both
exhausted yet each impeding the other’s
victory
…as two spent swimmers.
If you start imagining Macbeth and Banquo
swimming, fully armed, in the middle of a battle,
you will be confused indeed.
• There’s also no whore on the battlefield. But
fortune (the mythical figure, blindfolded and
spinning her wheel) is smiling—like a woman
who gets paid to convince men she loves
them—on the rebel’s, Macdonwald’s, cause.
• This is a pretty clear one. Macbeth fights his
way to Macdonwald like the special favorite or
“pet” of valour (bravery, fortitude, etc.).
Macbeth: The Language
Notice the nature or quality of the simile/metaphor. Often this will be a clue to how one character feels
about another, or how we are to feel about the character.
For example, in the passage on the previous slide, notice how Fortune smiles on the rebel’s cause
like a whore, but Macbeth fights like a favored one of valour.
Also, consider the example below from Act II, Scene III:
Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance:
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Here Macbeth is describing the appearance of Duncan’s body. The skin is not literally silver, nor the blood gold, but
Shakespeare is giving us information about how much Macbeth valued Duncan and thus regrets killing him—and how
conflicted (noble yet evilly ambitious) Macbeth is. We are to feel ambivalent toward Macbeth: appalled at his deed, yet
wanting to admire the person.
Macbeth: The Language
2. Macbeth, on the other hand, utters many, many more
similes and these are much more complex and “poetic”:
1. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth
uses very few similes, and these are
comparatively straightforward:
…his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued…
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
“Your face…is as a book…” (Act I, Scene V)
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
“Look like the innocent flower
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
But be the serpent under’t.” (Act I, Scene V)
“The sleeping and the dead are but as
pictures…” (Act II, Scene II)
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. (Act I, Scene VII)
…and who is described metaphorically. In the beginning of the
play, Macbeth is “Bellona’s bridegroom” (Act I, Scene II).
By the end of the play he is a “dead butcher” and Lady
Macbeth is his “fiend-like queen” (Act V, Scene VIII).
Macbeth: The Language
Personification:
• valour’s minion
• pity, like a naked newborn babe
• I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
• It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
• Is added to her wounds. (Act IV, Scene III)
Macbeth: The Language
Hyperbole:
• Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
• Clean from my hand? No, this hand will rather
• The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
• Making the green one red. (Act II, Scene II)
• … all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand (Act V, Scene I)
Understatement:
• This is a sorry sight. (Act II, Scene II).
Macbeth: The Language
Motifs:
Notice how Shakespeare repeats (or repeats and develops) certain themes or
phrases:
• Fair is foul, foul is fair;
• Cleaning Duncan’s blood from their hands;
• The witches’ abuse of words—ambiguities and hidden meanings;
• Guilt, repression, and madness;
• Sleep and sleeplessness.
Macbeth: Dramatic Techniques
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A soliloquy is a monologue. The character is alone onstage. It is a device the
playwright uses to give the audience insight into the character’s thoughts and
emotions.
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Shakespeare uses soliloquies to allow the reader to witness the conflict
between Macbeth’s honorable nature and his ambition combined with his desire
to please his wife.
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The aside is another device used by the playwright to give the audience insight
into the character. Here the character is speaking either to himself or directly to
the audience.
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There are other characters onstage who by convention do not hear the aside.
Macbeth: Dramatic Techniques
 A foil is a character who highlights or emphasizes certain traits of the
main character by contrasting them
 In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses both Banquo and Lady Macbeth as
foils for Macbeth.
 Banquo’s staunch integrity and Lady Macbeth’s unmitigated ambition
heighten the inner conflict between Macbeth’s own wavering integrity
and ambition.
Macbeth: Dramatic Techniques
 An allusion is an indirect reference to another event, person or work
with which the writer assumes the reader is familiar.
 Shakespeare uses allusions as techniques for establishing character,
building theme, setting mood.
 In Macbeth, there are allusions to Greek and Roman mythology,
Roman history, and the Bible.
Macbeth: Dramatic Techniques
 Use of the supernatural is another device
 Madness, either real or pretended, was another popular device in
Elizabethan drama
 One also cannot discuss Elizabethan tragedy without a discussion of
the tragic hero
 Finally, there can be no drama at all without conflict,…In Macbeth,
the primary conflict is internal between Macbeth’s strong sense of
Right and his strong desire both to be king and to please his wife
Macbeth: Characters
 Macbeth is a strong example of a dynamic character. At the
beginning of the play he is a courageous general, a man of honor with
a strong sense of duty and responsibility.
 These traits are what cause him to anguish over whether or not to kill
his king and cousin. In the middle of the play, he is guilt-ridden and
paranoid. By the end of the play he is a brooding tyrant who laments
the meaninglessness of his life.
Macbeth: Characters
 Lady Macbeth, on the other hand is a static character. From the
beginning of the play she is set—Duncan must be killed. To doubt or
to speak of guilt is foolish. Ironically, it is her inability to change that
ultimately leads to her insanity and suicide.
Macbeth: Some Background
 Written about 1605-1606
 Probably first performed 1606; first recorded
performance @ Globe in 1611
 Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy (1993 lines)
 Based loosely on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England,
Scotland, and Ireland (1577) (more on this later)
Macbeth: Some Background on King James
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Took the throne in 1603 upon the death of Elizabeth I
Was King of Scotland nearly since birth upon the abdication of
his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots
Great patron of the arts; as a king, the “wisest fool in
Christendom”
Very paranoid and superstitious
Claimed descent from Banquo, a Scottish thane – Shakespeare
writes Banquo as a foil to Macbeth and includes a vision of
Stuart royal line
Macbeth: Some Background on King James
and his history with witches and the Jesuits
 James I (as James VI of Scotland) wrote the Divine Right of
Kings, decree of royal absolutism in 1597-1598
 Gunpowder Plot of 1605 – foiled assassination attempt –
disenfranchised Catholics planned to blow up Parliament
 James fascinated/horrified by witchcraft – wrote
Daemonologie on witchcraft and witch hunting in 1597
Macbeth: Things to look for…
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Nature in revolt
Paradox (“fair is foul and foul is fair”) & equivocation
Images of light and darkness (& blindness), blood, birds, hands
The nature of kingship
Manhood
Macbeth: The Actual Story
Here is the story… in 7 minutes…